Great Old Broad Series: Debbie Reynolds

FRANK RIZZOHartford Courant

Last Sunday's screening at New Haven's Lyric Hall of the documentary "Broads,"that features salty, outspoken interviews with actresses of a certain age remind me of some of my own favorite interviews of like-minded dames.

Debbie Reynolds knows what it's like to be a regular gal thrown into a situation where she is expected to dance like a dream - as well as a dynamo. At 18 she was cast in the 1952 MGM movie musical "Singin' in the Rain," where she famously hoofed it up between such seasoned dancers as Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. As a plucky teenager starting out in the film business 60 years ago, she can identify with the anyone-can-do-it-if-they-work-hard spirit of such popular TV shows as "So You Think You Can Dance?" and "Dancing With the Stars." Reynolds is in Hartford to rehearse the launch of the U.S. tour of the popular British show, "Strictly Ballroom," which she hosts. The show premieres tonight at 7 at Hartford's Mortensen Hall at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts. It features more than a dozen professional ballroom dancers as well as a pair of "American Idol" singers: Anthony Federov and Vonzell Solomon. Reynolds, who turns 76 next month, was perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed (a stylish Technicolor jacket) and prepared to tell tales of old Hollywood last week at the Bushnell. With a career that goes back to the late '40s, the petite, poised, blue-eyed star is the queen mother of MGM's golden age of film, keeping movie memories alive with sharp-eyed, behind-the-scenes detail. Reynolds says dancing has always been a part of her life, first on a social basis when she was in junior high school and a pal, Leon Tyler (who was in the "Little Rascals" films), taught her the basic ballroom moves. "He lives near me now and we still go dancing," she says, nibbling on a kosher pickle from the nearby food table. But those dance steps were merely casual fun compared to what would await her professionally a few years later - and would change her life when she co-starred in one of the most famous movie musicals of all time. * Reynolds caught the eye of talent scouts when she won a Miss Burbank contest and signed with Warner Bros. when she was 16. After a few films, MGM picked up her contract, where she made an impression in small parts in 1950 films "Three Little Words" and "Two Weeks With Love" where she memorably sang the novelty song "The Aba Daba Honeymoon" with Carleton Carpenter. Then one day she was sent to the office of studio head Louis B. Mayer. "He said, 'Debbie, it's very nice having you at MGM and now I'm going to put you in a movie with Gene Kelly,' " she says. "I was astonished because I wasn't a dancer. I didn't have anything to say because I was just so nonplussed. "Then all of a sudden Mr. Kelly walked in through the door and Mr. Mayer said, 'Oh Gene, meet your new leading lady. This is Debbie Reynolds.' Gene was very surprised, and I don't think he was too happy with that quick introduction of a little girl who he could see was very young. I think he was 39 at the time and he was a huge star, as was Fred Astaire. They were the two biggest stars on the lot and they did their own movies and I thought they cast them completely themselves but on this day Gene got Debbie. "I just sat there very quietly while he said to me, 'How long have you been dancing?' I said, 'Actually 10 minutes ago when Mr. Mayer told me I was going to be in a movie with you.' " "And he said, 'Well, we'll see.' " "I remember him talking to Mr. Mayer asking him why he decided on me as I sat there in front of them. Mr. Mayer said, 'She's young, she's innocent, she's exactly right for the part.' And Gene said, "But she doesn't dance!" And Mr. Mayer said, "Well, she will. That's your job. You'll teach her." The next six months was an intensive effort to turn the teenager into a dancing whiz who could hold her own with two stars who had been dancing all their lives. Besides Kelly, she was coached by Jeanne Coyne (who became Kelly's second wife in 1960 and who had been married in 1948 to "Singin' " co-director Stanley Donan), Carol Haney and Ernest Flatt with tutelage from O'Connor. Was Kelly sympathetic to her dance challenge? "He was a task master," she says. "He never said, 'That was good.' He would just say, 'You have to work harder.' " And so she did, working from early morning to late at night, her feet often sore and bleeding. "It was wonderful in one way because you were only learning from the best but you just had to keep up by doing the slides and splits and all this very butch dancing. I would often cry and Gene would get mad at me saying, 'Go out and run around the building and get rid of those tears.' So I would and then go back to work. Gene had brown eyes that turned black when he got mad. I only saw his black eyes." Where would she go for emotional support? "I didn't have any. My parents were very close to me, but they didn't want to hear about how tough it was. That's the way their life was. My family did not have an easy life and we were very poor." She remembers after one time Kelly bawled her out, she took her lunch break eating a homemade bologna sandwich and pickles beneath a covered piano and sobbing. She heard a voice asking who was crying. It was Fred Astaire. He asked her what the matter was, and she said she wasn't sure she could learn all the dancing "and that I was tired and homesick and I don't know why I'm doing all of this. "He said, 'I'll tell you what. I'm going to allow you to watch me rehearse and then maybe you'll see that it's not easy to learn how to be a dancer' ." Astaire was famously private about rehearsing, placing a guard at the door while he worked with choreographer Hermes Pan and a drummer. " 'Just sit by the door and if you see me get upset and I motion to you, you'll have to go.' And I said, "Yes, sir.' I sat by the door and he started working on a very difficult dance step with a cane and throwing it in the air and tapping and he started getting red in the face and sweating because he couldn't seem to find this one [dance] combination he wanted. He was getting redder and redder when he turned to me and said, 'Now you see how red in the face I am? You know I am Fred Astaire and it's this hard for me - and it will always be this hard. In order to be great you have to sweat. Now you go to work and I don't want to hear you crying any more.' " * Reynolds went to the premiere of "Singin' in the Rain" with date Robert Wagner ("That was good enough for me," she says laughing.) She hadn't seen any footage of herself while she was filming the movie and so had never seen herself on screen dancing. When she saw herself doing the "Good Morning" number, "It was like, 'My gosh, I'm really good!' I was amazed it was me up there because I kept up with Gene and Donald and for a little kid who didn't dance and didn't know anything really, I think I did a terrific job." * She never got a word of praise from Kelly "and I never heard from Gene again until 1973 when he came to see me on Broadway in 'Irene,' in which I had some tough dance numbers. Well, he loved the show and came backstage and kissed me and said, 'You see? I told you it was worth all the hard work.' He remembered everything [about 'Singin' in the Rain']. He said, 'You couldn't have learned had I not been tough. You were a very stubborn girl and you had to learn to work' ." Was he right? "I'm very stubborn," she says. "Still am. But I always worked hard but I do think I work harder now because of his and Fred Astaire's teaching." * The golden era of the movie musical ended shortly after "Singin' in the Rain," though there have been occasional bursts of movie musical magic since then. "Who's around to do it today?" says Reynolds. "I see a lot of talented dancers but I haven't seen the greats like Gene or Fred." Her love of dance continued in later life (she received an Oscar nomination for her energetic performance in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in the early '60s, "Irene" in the '70s and her creation of the Debbie Reynolds Studio in the '80s, a state-of-the-art dance facility in North Hollywood. Reynolds continues to keep active with her nightclub show (a frequent performer at Mohegan Sun) as well as TV appearances. (She was Grace's show biz mom in "Will & Grace.") Recently, she was in Australia in a one-week run of a concertized version of "Irene," this time playing the scene-stealing maid originally portrayed by Patsy Kelly. But a return to the eight-performance-a-week life in a Broadway show isn't likely to happen, she says. "That takes your life away instead of your breath." Dancing remains dear to her heart. "Dancing is thrilling," she says. "When you do that challenging dance, when you work that hard, when you push yourself beyond where you think you can go and you just go anyway. You're going to get through it and you love it because you're trying to be more than who you are."